Note 634 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 2)
Reading edition
“Ex qua victoria carmen publicum juxta rusticitatem per omnium ora ita canentium, feminaeque choros inde plaudendo componebant.” Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti, Venetis, 1733, II. 590. This clapping of hands as one dances and sings is often found in communal records, and is common among savages, negroes, and the like. Among tribes on the White Nile, where no musical instruments were to be had, girls clapped their hands to the song and dance: Wallaschek, p. 87, and also cf. p. 102, the account of women seen by Captain Cook to snap their fingers in marking time for their song. The practice is common elsewhere; for Polynesia generally, see Waitz-Gerland, Anthropol., VI. 78 f. Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of it, I. 9:—
Castalidumque choros vario modulamine plausit
Carminibus, cannis, pollice, voce, pede;
while a dance to this hand-clapping is represented on an Assyrian monument: see Herrig’s Archiv, XXIV. 168, quoted by Böckel in the introduction to his Hessian ballads.—That actual songs were made by these women is clear; see the passage from Guillaume de Dôle, quoted by Jeanroy, Origines, p. 309:—
que firent puceles de France
a l’ormel devant Tremilli
on l’en a maint bon plet basti.